1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image pickup apparatus for picking up and recording a still image or a moving image, and also relates to a method for controlling the image pickup and recording operation of the image pickup apparatus, and a storage medium which stores therein a program for executing a process for controlling the image pickup and recording operation of the image pickup apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, as an image pickup apparatus, there has been put in the market an electronic camera which utilizes as a recording medium a memory card having solid memory elements and which is capable of picking up and recording a still image or a moving image. However, such a kind of an electronic camera has recently encountered a problem that may be concluded as follows. Namely, with digitization of video signals and with enlargement of the image size, an interval of image pickup and image recording will be undesirably increased. If this problem is not solved, there will always be a possibility that a good shutter opportunity can not be caught.
In order to solve the above problem, in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. Hei 6-86203, there is disclosed an electronic camera in which a photographed image is first temporarily stored and, if the next photographing command is received while the temporarily stored image is being recorded in a recording medium, such a recording process may be paused so as to start the photographing operation again.
However, as far as the user is concerned, it is not important to know how photographing, storing and recording operations are effected within the electronic camera. Instead, it is important to know how a photographing operation can be performed smoothly. Thus, it is usual for the user to think that an image recognized to have been photographed has been already recorded in a recording medium.
Nevertheless, up till now there has not been such technique that can be used to prevent, under the condition that a temporarily stored image is existing in a volatile buffer memory, the disappearance of image data possibly caused by a drop in an electric power source due to a mode change from a photographing mode to a power-off mode or caused by the detachment of a battery, or the disappearance of image data possibly caused by a failure in hardware due to the changeover to a mode other than the photographing mode, such as a reproduction mode.